[Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008

Samuel Klein meta.sj at gmail.com
Tue Apr 29 13:47:16 EDT 2008


There's no contradiction between activities that are fun, or with complex
ideas behind them, and those that teach the most basic health and survival
skills to children.

There are three health-related games being proposed and worked on at the
moment that are good examples; all of which could use further specific
input.  Food Force is closest to having something playable... pehaps Muriel
and Deepank can say a bit more about its recent status.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Water_Wonders
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Malnutrition
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Food_Force

SJ

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com> wrote:

> > From: "Ixo X oxI" <ixo at myna.ws>
> > Subject: [Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008 (article and pictures)
> > To: "OLPC Grassroots" <grassroots at lists.laptop.org>
> > Message-ID:
> >       <52bb973e0804281232s5ab06460t598406b19b1e72d8 at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > For those people interested in some pictures and write-up from the
> Health
> > Jam 2008 (Seattle, WA)
> >    ( http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Health_Jam )
> >
> >
> http://thedaily.washington.edu/2008/4/23/nonprofit-group-visits-campus-hopes-give-one-lapto/
> >
> >
> > And for a more detailed picture.
> >   http://thedaily.washington.edu/photo/2008/04/23/3101/
> >
> > Bonus for IRC and wiki people, can you guess which one is Seth
> > (isforinsects) and Iain (iXo).
> >
> > :)
> > -iXo
>
> Guys, sounds like an interesting event. I am wary that OLPC Health is
> focusing on complex systems when most of the kids (and adults) in
> deployments really need basic health information. They don't need a
> healthcare administration system like WorldVistA or MUMPS running on the
> XO, at least not in the short term.
>
> Kids need basic information about health and interactive learning
> activities those help them really understand those ideas.
>
> My experience working w/ university students is that they tend to start
> projects that are fun for research but not related to practical
> outcomes. For example, I meet many university kids that want to work on
> new physics engines or porting their favorite linux app to Sugar, but
> very few that want to work on Sugar's performance. They need to be
> guided to the problems that need the most attention.
>
> If OLPC Health's goal is to do new cool things w/ the XO that are
> somehow related to health, the current approach is fine. But if you guys
> want to create something that is really relevant to kids at deployments,
> I recommend focusing on the basic stuff.
>
> This reminds me of an earlier discussion about porting Matlab to the XO.
> Most Nepali kids who could use Matlab today or w/in a few months already
> own computers and go to private schools. The kids that OLPC is trying to
> reach need the basics of mathematics first. They need better activities
> to teach division, multiplication, algebra, etc.
>
> That's my two cents.
>
> I was really hope OLPC Health can make some progress towards
> activity(ies) that would teach kids about the causes of disease,
> sanitary habits, basic first aid, etc. That is what we could really use
> at our pilot schools in Nepal. I imagine the same is true for India,
> Peru, Mexico, etc.
>
> Bryan
> OLE Nepal
> Kathmandu
>
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